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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: Is your guild structured and sure or chaotic and competent?
by Dan O'Halloran 
Jan 31st 2008 at 8:00AM
I would think the more structured guild would be ahead, but the more loosely organized guild is moving along nicely. So nicely, in fact, that both guilds are progressing at about the same rate.
How does your guild do it? Formal or casual? And does your guild's style work for you or are you enduring it to get what you want from the raid?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Breakfast Topics, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
theRaptor Jan 31st 2008 6:56PM
Learn to read mate. I am not talking about guilds that struggle with kara due to gear, I said that thinking kara is serious business and that you need something ridiculous like Arcane resist (or lots of heroic runs) marks you as bad. I didn't even say kara was easy, I said curator is a kitten these days and not the guild killer he was early last year (seriously I can tank the astral flares, and I only have kara/badge gear).
Matt Jan 31st 2008 9:30AM
We have a raid schedule, and we stick to it. As for invites, basically we invite whoever is online, making sure we have the balance we need for the fights we are doing. If we don't, we just do another fight like Gruul or VR.
syrensilly Jan 31st 2008 9:37AM
I would say that Shadowfire on Malfurion is becoming more of a structured and organized guild. We're starting to use a calendar to set up some of the larger groups, but we still have plenty of spontaneous guild runs happening also. Trying to set up the Kara raids etc, means a bit of planning ahead for those involved. I am still trying to figure out how we managed a spontaneous run to ZG.
Blorg Jan 31st 2008 9:37AM
Karazan is not serious business, and that guild's requirements seem extremely foolish.
Curator is cake these days, and even when he was a wee bit tricky and Karazan hadn't been utterly nerfed my guild had 3 runs past him every week with nary a scrap of arcane resist between them.
Patyn Jan 31st 2008 12:19PM
My group is working on a little more structure than we've had in the past. Meaning we've just now added the Group Calendar and have our first scheduled raid with it tomorrow night.
But I think it depends on who you ask as to whether that's a good thing. :)
Chase Willen Feb 6th 2008 6:41PM
My guild is from Andorhal, otherwise knows as Andorlawl, {Knights of Chi Rho} You can search our name on Wikipedia, but we have Aprozimately 200 guild memebers, most are lvl 20-50, we have the acasual lvl 67`s not yet lvl 70. We have about 4 70`s. not yet enough for raids, but andorhal isnt known for good raids, hopefully my guild will be able to turn that around. ive even thought about Linking together with another guild Named Knights of thunder. thought about linking up together with them on raids, get our raid party full, raid crossroads and stupid places like that, would be so sweet.!!! so check me out, my nick is Axeldrake
Pucelle Jan 31st 2008 10:14AM
My guild uses a raid calendar to determine if people will show up - but it seems like whoever's online and meets class requirements will get in.
I like it.
JaeZeela Jan 31st 2008 1:39PM
We're pretty much in the same boat - raids/groups are announced ahead of time and people post just to show interest. Then the group is made up of whoever is online and ready to go at the time. It's casual and simple, but its a real pain to have one healer, one tank and 8 DPS classes want to do Kara. Ugh.
Sometimes I wish we were more structured, but to find the level of organization I'd like, I know I would have to gquit.
alex Jan 31st 2008 12:36PM
Red Branch on Staghelm, were trying to be structured but it doesnt seem to be working out to well. With near 200 members we've had issues getting 10 to Kara at once. Its getting better though and last wednesday we had our full compliment raiding (2 kara groups) with more on deck.
hoeding Jan 31st 2008 11:09AM
SSC/TK on farm (getting more people attuned for hyjal and BT atm)
We Raid Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday for DKP. Invites go out at 6:30 on the dot and first pull is at 7:00. DKP is awarded for on time raid attendance and new boss kills and at least 75% attendance is expected to be classified as a raider. We expect consumables to be used on progression content. On our offnights we are free to do whatever we feel like - PVP, setup nonprogression 25 mans with alts, kara, ZA. It has worked out quite well for us as one of the oldest remaining guilds on the server and are doing well progression wise since we just started raiding 25's before winter started after a hiatus. Our raid are understanding if you can't make a raid since they know that RL stuff does come up (we don't recruit people under 18)
Ezzy Jan 31st 2008 11:26AM
The guild I am in jokes that we are "casually hardcore". There is no real schedule. The only thing we have "scheduled" is Hyjal/BT on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. People are expected to be on time and prepared. The rest of the week we kinda all do our own thing. We try to do Kara and Gruuls with our alts. Some people PVP.
Good_Idea Jan 31st 2008 11:29AM
I don't think any "serious" raiding guild could achieve anything without a fair amount of structure.
By serious, I mean a guild doing Hygal / BT or on Kael in TK. I don't believe a guild can finish TK without some degree of structure and organization, even if you don't know about it.
Some of you have never been in a real raiding guild, and it really shows in your comments. If you're doing Kara and Gruul, you're right, you don't need structure.
Keith Jan 31st 2008 3:22PM
4/5 Hyjal, 4/9 BT, we don't have a raid calendar, we don't have class leaders, we don't have much structure at all.
Our loot is done by a DKP system, and raids are pretty much daily - but there is no minimum attendance requirement, save that if you don't show at all for 2 weeks unannounced, you lose priority on loot until you show up for 2 weeks straight.
It seems to work for us.
theRaptor Jan 31st 2008 6:57PM
TK and SSC are fairly easy these days after all the nerfs. There are plenty of casual and low/no structure guilds that clear them.
Milktub Jan 31st 2008 11:48AM
We're half structured. We set up a scheduled raid, but if people don't show up, there's some joking hard feelings next time they long in. We don't play the blame game on a wipe, but we do try to find out where things went wrong and try to correct them next time.
It's not a bad way. We get to raid 3-4 times a month and that's gotten us part way into Kara.
rick gregory Jan 31st 2008 1:26PM
"It's not a bad way. We get to raid 3-4 times a month and that's gotten us part way into Kara."
And people who do this aren't really raiding. You're doing a 10 man raid kind of like a 5 man instance - "hey, anyone wanna run...?". Which is, of course, fine. But unless you have a LOT of people on you really can't do that with the 25 mans... you need, oh, 6-9 healers for Gruul and beyond (no, not 9 for Gruul...) and for most guilds that takes some planning.
And I think a lot of this is the composition of the guild - for guilds whose active members are usually on most nights it might work with sufficient numbers. For people who need to schedule raids so the can plan other aspects of their lives (going out, etc) you NEED some kind of schedule.
Dave Jan 31st 2008 12:20PM
I'd like a guild that has a pretty decent blend of organization and slack.
Right now i'm in a full-slack guild where nothing is "scheduled" aside from maybe a forum post (on a forum nobody really reads) or the MOTD a day beforehand, maybe two. Times change frequently, sometimes things start when they're supposed to, sometimes they start later, etc etc. It's absolute chaos, and we're going nowhere. Good raiders who want progression don't stick around long, and unfortunately it's my friends... so I feel obligated to stick around. (I left for a while, had some good success raiding with an alt... and was lured back with the promise that things were going to be different with my friend as the guild leader rather than the 19 year old kid with no job living with his parents as the leader, but as of yet it hasn't changed).
Maybe for people with no particular responsibility in life other than school, totally unstructured guilds work out well for them. If you can find a large enough group of people to make it happen, that's great.
Myself, with a full time job (10hr days, yay) and a significant other you live with and eat dinner with every night after getting home and a pretty strict bedtime so I can make it to work the next morning... I can't have slacker bullshit that isn't pretty tightly arranged. If I'm gonna be on at 7PM to play a video game, I kinda expect to be ready to rock at 7PM and I need to know about it in advance in order to make sure I can make it happen.
And yeah, I'm bitter about raiding. Most of the people playing this game are nowhere near the sort of lifestyle I have, so without abandoning my friends... I really can't raid. It's a load of crap.
kenney Jan 31st 2008 1:24PM
We post available time windows, and then our raid leader creates a weekly raid schedule (a few karas, a few ZAs, TK/SSC/Mag/Gruul as possible)
I think it works about as well as you could hope- it drives the guild to our forums, and it ensures maximum itemization per week of our raid force. Also, it means that our raids start on time.
I'm sort of at a point where I log on to do my dailies, and to raid- so this is ideal for me. I can have a life and still get my wow fix without spending hours in shattrath aimlessly wandering around.